IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamist/v63y2012i2p406-415.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The inconsistency of the h‐index

Author

Listed:
  • Ludo Waltman
  • Nees Jan van Eck

Abstract

The h‐index is a popular bibliometric indicator for assessing individual scientists. We criticize the h‐index from a theoretical point of view. We argue that for the purpose of measuring the overall scientific impact of a scientist (or some other unit of analysis), the h‐index behaves in a counterintuitive way. In certain cases, the mechanism used by the h‐index to aggregate publication and citation statistics into a single number leads to inconsistencies in the way in which scientists are ranked. Our conclusion is that the h‐index cannot be considered an appropriate indicator of a scientist's overall scientific impact. Based on recent theoretical insights, we discuss what kind of indicators can be used as an alternative to the h‐index. We pay special attention to the highly cited publications indicator. This indicator has a lot in common with the h‐index, but unlike the h‐index it does not produce inconsistent rankings.

Suggested Citation

  • Ludo Waltman & Nees Jan van Eck, 2012. "The inconsistency of the h‐index," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 63(2), pages 406-415, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:2:p:406-415
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.21678
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21678
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/asi.21678?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:63:y:2012:i:2:p:406-415. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.